Welcome to the Mclowd Community Newsletter.
“In the past six months, the economics of free-to-air television and Australia’s dominant cable TV provider, Foxtel, have come under serious threat from online entertainment provider, Netflix.
The profitability of the local television industry is set to take some big hits after more than half a million households signed on to Netflix’s video-on-demand service.”
How Netflix could become the Foxtel killer, July 20th 2015
Introduction
It costs Foxtel nothing when one of their customers watches a movie, just as it costs Netflix nothing when one of their subscribers watches House of Cards.
As I discussed in a recent blog post, Netflix produced House of Cards because it is an integral part of their strategy to drive down the marginal cost of streaming video content to a global audience.
By producing their own shows (even at considerable expense), they drove the marginal cost of streaming House of Cards to zero, which in turns supports their pricing structure, where customers can consume unlimited amounts of content for just $10.00 per month.
In relation of profitability incumbent firms like Foxtel (and countless others across a raft of industries, including accounting software) are about to find themselves in terminal decline for one simple reason:
THEY OPERATE AT PRICE POINTS THAT ARE FURTHER FROM MARGINAL COST THAN NEW ENTRANTS
Accounting Platform Update
Over the last couple of months Mclowd has made a number of architectural improvements in order to improve asset history reporting, particularly as it relates to corporate actions.
From this foundation the following additional features are either live or will be released in the next few days:
- Corporate actions:
- Scrip for scrip rollover
- In-specie contributions
- The ability to dispose of multiple parcels of shares in a single transaction
- Contributions cap report
- Support for transition from accumulation to pension
We have also executed the SBR Licence Agreement with the ATO – and while we must continue to respond to user feedback as it is received – the Team are now working steadily towards the ability to submit an SMSF tax return online.
New Website
The new Mclowd website is now live, and is a much better reflection of the growth of the Community and the maturation of the underlying technology.
Mclowd @ Afiniation 2015
Mclowd will be presenting at the upcoming Afiniation Fintech Showcase in Sydney on September 24th. For more information and to register for this event click here.
Postscript
Class Super recently confirmed its intention to list the company.
A listed entity with the sort of valuation that is being targeted will be expecting to generate tens of millions of $$ in licence fees for its SMSF accounting software each and every year. Over time that would mean hundreds of millions of $$ that will not be available to fund the retirement incomes of tens of thousands of Australians.
At the same time that the Class story has been evolving the Team at Mclowd has been working tirelessly to make SMSF accounting software freely available (but still has some way to go to deliver an equivalent solution).
In comparison to the valuations being targeted by Class, the Mclowd Community has been built on less than $400K in equity capital (but far more in terms of social capital), and has absolutely no expectations of an IPO, which would simply invite the sort of disruption that Mclowd itself is triggering.
To assist us in finishing the job (particularly ATO integration), and to bring attention to the implications of the Class IPO, Mclowd has decided to conduct a crowdfunding campaign.
The campaign will be run on Australian-based crowdfunding platform Pozible, and will allow existing and prospective users to help drive Mclowd towards the finish line.
If you would like to support our efforts to make SMSF accounting software free, just click here:
Kind Regards
Ashley Porter
Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltdhttp://mclowd.com/mclowd-newsletter-august-2015/http://mclowd.com/mclowd-newsletter-august-2015/http://mclowd.com/mclowd-newsletter-august-2015/